Category: Super Bowl

With Super Bowl LII taking place in Minneapolis, locally-headquartered dairy brand Land O’Lakes found an ideal opportunity to highlight a cause close to its heart–farming and agriculture.

Via The Martin Agency, the brand organized the “Farm Bowl,” inviting professional football players past and present to compete against Land O’Lakes farmers in events such as the Tractor Tire Change, Milk Pipe Puzzle, Drone Drop and Hay Bale Backup.

The event, which took place at the University of Minnesota, was aimed at educating and empowering students to champion nutrition and agriculture.

“Super Bowl LII offers an exciting stage to convey the importance of farming to feeding the world, and to show how Land O’Lakes’ member owners are impacting the entire food chain, farm to fork, from our iconic butter brand and far beyond,” says Chris Policinski, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc, in a statement. “Less than two percent of the population touches farming and, as the voice of the farmer, we feel an obligation to tell their important story.”

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Bud Light isn’t backing down from its vow to throw a party for the city of Philadelphia after the underdog Eagles defeated the New England Patriots on Sunday.

The AB InBev (ABEV) beer brand’s bet traces back to last August, when Eagles offensive lineman Lane Johnson told reporters that he would be “giving out beer to everybody” if Philadelphia won a Super Bowl. Bud Light responded to his comment with a friendly bet, offering to cover party costs if the Eagles won the big game.

The Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 in the Super Bowl.

The company tweeted that 25 bars along the Philadelphia victory parade route will be offering free Bud Light to patrons.

Bud Light continued its “Dilly Dilly” commercial series during the Super Bowl. The 60-second spot featured the latest hijinks of the brand’s medieval characters, who happen to be obsessed with light beer. The brand released a special “Philly, Philly” version of the popular ad earlier this month to commemorate the Eagles’ title run.

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In the chaos of watching last night’s real Super Bowl commercials on NBC, it was tough to break away for Skittles’ Super Bowl ambush—the Facebook Live stunt it orchestrated during the game in which a single person got to watch its “Super Bowl” ad, with the Facebook audience simply watching the kid watch it.

So here’s a recap of how that went down.

It turned out to be an 18-minute broadcast. And while, as promised, we didn’t get to see the actual ad—we only saw Marcos Menendez watching it—we did get some clues about the plot, as Menendez was allowed to describe it afterward.

See the full Facebook Live video here:

Menendez said the ad, created by DDB, featured David Schwimmer with glowing eyes, as seen in one of the teasers. The plot involved Schwimmer wandering around and shooting people with some kind of laser from his mouth. Anyone who was hit by the laser turned into Skittles.

They personalized it in a fun way for Menendez, though. They shot a portion of the ad at Menendez’s own house, and his mother even appeared in it. She showed up in a scene on a bus, where she was, in Menendez’s words, “mad dogging” Schwimmer, who was seated in the back of the bus. He quickly shot her with a laser, and she turned into Skittles.

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The process of making a Super Bowl ad often entails the deployment whiz-bang special effects honed with weeks of editing and fine-tuning. Not so for Diet Coke, which this year converted what was originally supposed to be a quick social media video into its 30-second in-game TV ad.

The spot, by Anomaly Los Angeles, shows actress Hayley Magnus extolling the virtues of Diet Coke’s new Twisted Mango flavor with a little dance. The video was originally meant to be part of a portfolio of tweetable videos for the brand’s new “Because I can” campaign that touts Diet Coke’s new flavor lineup that comes in slim cans.

Magnus improvised the scene while filming in intense heat in east Los Angeles, says Danielle Henry, group director of integrated marketing content for Coca-Cola North America. It was filmed in one take and directed by Paul Feig, whose credits include the “Ghostbusters” reboot and creating the TV series “Freaks and Geeks.”

The brand liked the video so much that it became its Super Bowl ad. The spot marks the first time Diet Coke has run an ad in the game since 1997.

“This little teeny tiny snackable peice of social content ended up being one of the best pieces of content that we have in the campaign because it’s one of the things that best showcases the attitude of Diet Coke’s ‘because I can’—-that being do whatever makes you happy no matter what anyone else thinks,” Henry says.

Magnus is among a larger cast of up-and-coming actors that Diet Coke put in the broader campaign, which debuted in late January. The approach contrasts with the brand’s prior strategy of plucking big-name celebrities and pop stars, like Taylor Swift. Magnus herself plays the character Simone on the Australian TV series “Wrong Girl.”

The 6-second and 15-second spots, titled “M&M’s Again,” continue the story arc where the red M&M’s “spokescandy” complains about people trying to eat him and makes a wish on a penny to become human. The wish comes true and the red character takes the human form of DeVito. In the pre-roll ads, DeVito turns back into a candy, but then — spoiler alert — gets stepped on.

Along with the full Super Bowl spot and the pre-roll ads, the candy brand has released multiple teasers for the campaign by BBDO New York. In December, it announced that it would return as a Super Bowl advertiser after a three year hiatus. M&M’s released a 30-second teaser to run ahead of the Critics’ Choice Awards on Jan. 11 showing film critics reacting to the ad. Later in January, M&M’s teased the campaign by showing 15 seconds of DeVito floating in a pool of chocolate to drive excitement around the full Super Bowl spot.

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M&M’s may be a perfect candidate for the super-short video format for social media. The recognizable candy brand with strong visual imagery has the ability to deliver messages in short spurts, making the content more easily digestible for consumers. The brand hopes to score with the 6- and 15-second spots, as the pre-roll ads immediately follow a heavily teased social media campaign and one of the most talked about live TV ad events of the year last weekend.

More marketers are realizing the power of short videos less than 10 seconds as a way to reach younger audiences. Millennials’ attention spans for ads is only 5 to 6 seconds, a comScore study found, so these quick pre-roll ads have the change to successfully hold their attention. One way brands are seeing success with the format is by creating and retargeting multiple short videos to reach consumers who previously interacted with a longer campaign, signaling their interest in the ad’s subject matter. Last year, Yoplait saw a 1,461% boost in brand interest following a campaign with a 60-second TV and online spot and 32 six-second video ads customized based on online behavior.

After taking the past three years off, the candy brand seemed to embrace the “go big or go home” strategy for Super Bowl LII. Along with the TV and super-short video spots, the candy brand set up a Twitter-activated vending machine in Minneapolis ahead of the game, where visitors could view the brand’s commercial and sample candies. Twitter-activated vending machines generally ask consumers to tweet with a specific handle and hashtag in exchange for a product.

The in-person Twitter activation and multiple campaign videos is giving M&M’s quite some social media boost. Building high levels of momentum before the game and following it up with a post-game push will likely help the candy brand get the most out of its $5 million Super Bowl ad buy. Research has proven this to be a generally effective strategy, as Super Bowl advertisers see heightened sales and social media engagement in the months following the game.